The present invention relates to a surgical guide device, particularly but not exclusively to a reduction clamp device for supporting bone fragments in a fixed position during surgical intervention, for example while a pin or other bone fixing is inserted through the bone fragments. The invention also relates, in some aspects, to a method of guiding the insertion of a fixing device into a portion of the body such as a bone fracture.
Often during the reduction of bone fractures (the clamping and fixing of two or more bone fragments together) the best site for clamping the two bone fragments together is often also the best site for inserting a fixation system e.g. drilling and inserting a pin or screw. However, since the ideal fixation site is typically blocked by the reduction device, the surgeon often has to insert the fixation device in a less than ideal position next to the reduction device. The surgeon may also be forced to insert the fixation system at an obtuse angle, in order to get as close to the ideal fixation point as possible. This may ultimately lead to the possibility of non-ideal healing and strength of the repaired bone.
Existing devices to support bone portions for pinning or other intervention are known, for example from U.S. Pat. No. 5,725,532, which essentially comprises a drill guide on the end of one limb of a scissor arrangement. Bone fragments are held together by the device while a drill is passed through the drill guide to drill a hole for a screw or other device to fix the bone portions together.
A problem with such scissor-type devices is that there is only a small range of angles between the two limbs of the device for which the longitudinal axis of the drill guide points directly at the opposite tip of the other limb of the scissor. Accordingly such devices can only be used for a particular bone diameter and multiple devices will be required to accommodate different bones sizes. For example, if such a device were to be used to clamp a larger bone diameter that that for which it is designed, the longitudinal axis of the drill guide would point beyond the tip of the other limb of the scissor, which would lead to non-ideal conditions for reducing, drilling and pinning the bone due to instability of the device clamped on the bone fragments. There remains a need for a surgical guide device that can accurately guide the insertion of a fixing device into a number of different bones of various diameters. It is an aim of the present invention to provide improved devices and methods for reducing bone fractures.